As the first pillar in the M2M IWG effort and the initiative that spawned the entire project, Koneki aims to solve one of the biggest problems for M2M developers: a lack of effective tools for developing embedded applications. Read More »

Interoperability is an overlapping set of technical and policy challenges, from data access to common data models to information exchange to workflow integration – and these challenges often pose a barrier to healthcare innovation. Microsoft has been engaged for many years on developing best practices for interoperability across industries. Today, as health IT community leaders get together at the CMS Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference here in Washington, DC, we’re pleased to announce that Microsoft has joined with Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce in support of healthcare interoperability...

As part of an effort to expand the global openEHR community, Marand has decided to open source ADL Designer, a web -based archetype development tool. The tool allows visual authoring of ADL 2 archetypes and templates including full archetype parsing, validation, flattening and serialisation. Backward compatibility for existing ADL 1.4 archetypes and export to Operational Template (1.4 OPT) is also supported. Previously, Marand had also open sourced ADL2 core libraries to provide a java based reference implementation of the Archetype Definition Language ADL 2.0 and AOM specifications.

Gianugo Rabellino is the Senior Director of Open Source Communities at [MS Open Tech] a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation that is focused on advancing Microsoft’s commitment to openness across the company and throughout the industry. With more than 20 years experience in the open source community, [...] Gianugo chatted with us about his perspective on openness at Microsoft, and what it’s like being an integral part of MS Open Tech. Read More »

Much of the Internet runs Linux and open source software, yet in most of our schools—whether PK-12 or higher education—Linux and open source software are given short shrift. Linux has made serious inroads on hand-held devices, the desktop, and the Internet of things (IoT) that use platforms such as Raspberry Pi, Galileo, and Arduino. Despite this astounding growth, a relatively small number of secondary and post-secondary schools offer technology training that prepares students for increasingly in-demand technical skills. The growth of the maker movement and the concurrent interest in STEM skills, which include coding and ethical hacking, may provide a much-needed impetus to change this trend. The problem for most schools is finding the mentors and exemplars of this paradigm...

Machine learning has come of age in public health reporting according to researchers from the Regenstrief Institute and Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. They have found that existing algorithms and open source machine learning tools were as good as, or better than, human reviewers in detecting cancer cases using data from free-text pathology reports. The computerized approach was also faster and less resource intensive in comparison to human counterparts.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence have quickly gained traction with the public through applications such as Apple’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana. The true promise of these disciplines, though, extends far beyond simple speech recognition performed on our smartphones. New, open source tools are arriving that can run on affordable hardware and allow individuals and small organizations to perform prodigious data crunching and predictive tasks.

As everyone knows by now, the superstorm known as 'Hurricane Sandy' has caused considerable devastation across the East Coast of the United States and all the way up to the Great Lakes region. The effects of the storm will continue to be felt for days and weeks as major portions of the East Coast are without electricity and flooding is expected to continue for days. Under these circumstances, it seemed appropriate to put together a listing of open source applications that have been successfully used in emergencies and disaster recovery all over the world. In times of man-made crises or natural disasters, there is a range of organizations, websites, open source tools, mobile apps, and more that might be of use to first responders and citizens in general. Check out some of the following resources...

Nairobi's Tunapanda Institute has been using open source tools to provide technology, design, and business training in East Africa since its inception in 2013. Next year the school will launch a "space academy" to inspire young people to think about some of the most critical challenges facing humanity on this planet and beyond. Tunapanda's founders believe that everyone should have the opportunity to help shape the future, and in order for that to happen there must be learning materials and tools that are open, shareable, and unrestricted so that anyone, no matter their financial or educational background, can learn and be inspired.

Open source technology is now visible everywhere in government from the basic operating systems that federal computers run on to the blogs, websites and social media tools they use to communicate with the public. Red Hat, which helps companies manage, maintain and secure open source tools [...] has been at the forefront of much of this adoption. Read More »

Virtual microscopy includes digitisation of histology slides and the use of computer technologies for complex investigation of diseases such as cancer. However, automated image analysis, or website publishing of such digital images, is hampered by their large file sizes. Results: We have developed two Java based open source tools: Snapshot Creator and NDPI-Splitter. Read More »

Security challenges, lack of education, interoperability concerns and licensing and legal concerns are some of the top obstacles government officials see for adopting open-source software in agencies, according to a survey in a recent report from GovLoop. Read More »

Is it possible to set up an IT infrastructure for translational research for an entire country? The Dutch Translational Research IT (TraIT) project (http://www.ctmm-trait.nl/) believes it is. Admittedly, The Netherlands is not exactly the same size as China or the US, but nevertheless already 26 partners from industry and academia to collaborate in this consortium to organize, deploy, and manage a nationwide IT infrastructure for data and workflow management targeted specifically at the needs of translational research.